Around 850 people from Guatemala’s Maya Quiché Presbytery and visitors from Heartland Presbytery gathered in January at the Maya Quiché Bible Institute in the Guatemalan highlands near Quetzaltenango to celebrate more than 20 years of partnership.
About 10 years ago, even weeds wouldn’t grow on the land that was given to DouglaPrieta Trabaja, a grassroots community group that promotes food security. But the group’s members dreamed big. They dreamed of converting the barren land in the Mexican border town of Agua Prieta into a food jungle. And with lots of hard work, tons of different types of manure, and loads of compost, laughter, tears and prayer, they are producing more vegetables than their families can eat. And they are blessing their community not only with fresh vegetables, but also with an example of faith and perseverance.
When I arrived in Louisville, Kentucky, for the Association of Presbyterian Church Educators Annual Event in January, my mind was focused on the details. As co-chair of the conference, I had a stack of lists on Post-It notes, and my concerns were more focused on the schedule than they were on whether God’s presence would be felt. But without a doubt, God was there.
When Don Stribling looks at the Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) program, he sees an experience that challenges the
individualism that pervades much of today’s religious practice.
Presbyterians should reach out to those in need, in a world “where a few have a lot, and a lot have less,” says the Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
Young Adult Volunteers (YAVs) engage in a faith-based year of service in over 20 sites around the world and in the U.S. YAVs, ages 19–30, accompany local agencies working to address root causes of poverty and reconciliation while exploring the meaning and motivation of their faith in intentional Christian community with peers and mentors for one academic year, August through July.
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) minister Jake Medcalf refuses to believe that the denomination should just go quietly into the night. “If we’re going to survive,” he says, “we have to trust God has more for us than Sunday morning worship and go make an impact in the neighborhood where we are.”
As a mission co-worker and cultural worker in the Philippines, sometimes I am utterly exhausted. There are periods that require quite a bit of travel related to meetings and theater-based trainings for children, youth, church workers, teachers, women and others. When I am in Dumaguete, days sometimes stretch into late evenings for rehearsals with our youth theater group or with Silliman University Divinity School students preparing for the annual church workers convocation. So a few years ago, when asked by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) program if my husband, Cobbie, and I would consider reopening the Philippines YAV service site, we pondered, could we? Should we? Could we say no?
Speaking to attendees at the 2018 gathering of the Association of Presbyterian Church Educators (APCE), the Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II, Stated Clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), assumed the role of cheerleader for educators.
I’ve always been stubborn. My mother has a picture of me as a child, with arms crossed and a determined squint that sums up most of my childhood and possibly my adult personality. Difficult, resistant, overly critical — I’ve been called many things throughout my life. Maybe that’s why I’ve always enjoyed Wendell Berry’s poem Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front. Throughout this piece, Berry eloquently encourages the reader to do things like: “… do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. … Ask the questions that have no answers.” Berry not only empowers us to be cantankerous, but indeed goes on to warn that if we are not, we are putting our individual and, ultimately, communal moral compass at risk. Finally, my “troublesome” traits are vindicated!
